The Center for Jobs and the Economy has released its full analysis of the February employment data. For additional information and data about the California economy visit www.centerforjobs.org/ca.

The potential effects on the state economy continue to expand as the emergency social distancing measures have now been extended through at least the end of April for the US and in California under Executive Order N-33-20 “until further notice” but based on indications from the Governor’s Office, likely into at least May.

The February employment and jobs data just released by EDD are based on surveys done the week of February 12. Consequently, they do not yet reflect effects coming from measures taken within the US and California to combat COVID-19, but they begin to indicate effects coming from global supply chain disruptions related to the original outbreaks in China. These effects in particular are shown in the unadjusted numbers for Transportation & Warehousing and Retail Trade which dropped more strongly from January. Additional information will be shown in the March numbers scheduled for release on April 17, although due to the fact they will be based on surveys from the week of March 12, they also will still reflect effects of the supply disruptions more than effects of the current closures. A more complete accounting will first be seen in the April numbers scheduled for release on May 22.

As a base indicator tool to summarize these changes as they occur, the following chart contains the most recent employment estimates by industry along with the 12-month change taken from the revised data for the same month in the prior year.  The data used is the unadjusted numbers to show actual job levels held by Californians rather than the statistical levels from the seasonally adjusted data, and to enable use of the average wage and hours worked numbers where available from this series.  The 2019 data will continue to be used for the pre-COVID base comparison. Month-to-month changes will still be instructive to indicate which industries and areas are being the most affected, but the year over year comparison allows seasonal factors to be taken into account. Within this chart, note that “employment” is the number of persons age 16 and over working, including wage & salary jobs, self-employment, and non-paid family workers in the civilian workforce.  “Jobs” are the number of wage & salary jobs, with individual workers holding one or more of these jobs.

The New York Federal Reserve Bank has created a new Weekly Economic Index to track changes in the national economy as they are occurring, to provide economic estimates in advance of the official data series.  Based on weekly data, the Index indicates the change in annual GDP that would result from the weekly trends continuing for the entire quarter.  For example, the Index value of -3.97 for the week of March 21 indicates annual GDP would decline by 3.97% if that week’s trends were projected over a full quarter.  This is nearly the same value reached by the Index the week of February 28, 2009, just over a year into the recession that began in early 2008, an indication of how sharp the current decline in current economic activity now is.  The historical series showing the sharp drop off last week is in the chart below.